Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: persecution

  • Psalm 119:161 – Persecuted

    Psalm 119:161 – Persecuted

    Princes have persecuted me without any reason,
    Yet what I fear is your word.

    A great deal in life comes down to priorities. What is it that makes me most afraid?

    People frequently comment on how hard it is to talk to people about their faith. They wonder if people will get upset. Perhaps they’ll hurl insults or ridicule someone.

    Now I have to confess that I don’t get a real choice about this. When I’m asked what I do I answer, “I own a Christian publishing company.” I’m now on the hook for my faith. I might feel like avoiding faith sharing for some reason, but it won’t work. If someone wants to insult me, there I am.

    But what I find is that relatively few people, in fact vanishingly few, want to say nasty things to me. Some are sympathetic and compliment me on a great professional activity. Some are not Christians, and comment on that. Some will actually ask me about my faith. I feel l distinctly unpersecuted.

    Other people may well have a different experience. It may often depend on what you choose to put first in conversation.

    Now with some other Christians, things can get interesting, and here there is an important point. The Psalm here doesn’t saw whether these “princes” or “powerful people (NLT) are Israelites or not. Christians can get quite nasty.

    I was talking about this today with a friend. People can get very uncomfortable when I talk about actual spiritual experience. “God spoke to me yesterday,” can put some other Christians on edge, even when I’m noting that what God said was to me. It wasn’t a message directed at them. It’s just “God spoke” that gets them upset. There’s also the notion of “prayer language.” Just the term can get people upset for various reasons.

    What about a belief in present day miracles? Or variations in the way we understand miracles? There are so many things that we actually have a hard time discussing with one another. What about my reaction to the person who has a negative reaction when I say God has spoken to me?

    The one thing we’re supposed to fear is God’s word, and most frequently when people encounter God or a messenger of God, their response is fear and the messages is “Fear not!” I suspect that God has something to say to you as well.

    What is God saying (God’s word) to you today?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:86 – Valid

    Psalm 119:86 – Valid

    All your commands are valid,
    Yet they persecute me with falsehood.
    Help me!

    In most translations you will find a word like “truth” describing the commands. I think that “truth” with reference to a command can understood as validity. The commands are fitting, appropriate, and right. I could also change the term in the second line from “falsehood” to “invalidity.”

    How does one persecute with falsehood?

    Yesterday, discussing verse 85, I discussed made up or misapplied rules. Those ideas could apply here. I suspect the psalmist is talking about the use of rumors, careless and inaccurate reports, and vague accusations. I think people have used these things as long as there have been people. Currently we use the term “disinformation” to talk about stories that are intentionally false in order to pursue some goal of the writer.

    But a more common form of falsehood that harms is careless inaccuracy. I see this regularly on social media. People post or repost rumors and those rumors grow and morph as time goes on. It is nearly impossible to root them out, because they fit with someone’s view of the universe. They are used to run down other people or groups.

    There are various excuses for the use of falsehood, such as not having time to check, or just posting/repeating to see what people think. But the bottom line is that people’s reputations are harmed and it becomes harder and harder to communicate. We wind up living in fantasy worlds made up of the falsehoods we have absorbed.

    It’s easy to deceive ourselves that this is a strictly modern phenomenon, brought about by the presence of the internet. But these sorts of things have been passed on for millennia. The internet and social media have just made them more convenient. Their nature hasn’t changed.

    Any time we repeat or post things that are false, we bear false witness against our neighbors. You may be thinking I’m primarily talking about the political landscape, and I am concerned. Fact-oriented exchanges of ideas are of great value. But I’m also greatly concerned with what we do to one another in our churches and in our local communities.

    Paul was concerned enough about this to list “gossips” and/or “scandalmongers” in his various famous sin lists. I’m looking at Romans 1;29-30 right now.

    But there are verses about this closer to home, i..e. in Psalms and Proverbs. For example:

    “Gossip is sharp as a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” (Proverbs 12:18)

    “A scoundrel takes up evil gossip; it is like a scorching fire on his lips.” (Proverbs 16:27)

    Or the complaint in Psams; “Those who sit by the town gate gossip about me; I am the theme of drunken songs.” (Psalms 69:12)

    A good strategy would be to fight falsehood with truth, fight the invalid with valid. Don’t believe and don’t repeat anything you can’t be certain is true and useful.

    What can you not repeat today to help make the world a more “valid” place?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Reflections on Teaching Revelation

    Reflections on Teaching Revelation

    Revelation: A Participatory Study GuideThis past Sunday I completed teaching a four week series on Revelation for one of the Sunday School classes at Chumuckla Community Church. It’s always interesting to try to teach a short series on the book of Revelation. There is so much there, and so much background information is needed. It’s difficult to be effective.

    This series turned out well. My goal was to suggest some ways to read Revelation more profitably. We discussed the nature of the book and looked at some specific passages as examples. I hope that the material I was able to share will help folks dig deeper into other books of the Bible as well.

    Here are some points that impressed themselves on me during this series.

    1. I’m more convinced than ever that we need to read Revelation more for theology and spiritual growth and less for trying to lay out timelines for the end of the world. I find good theology and good principles in many of these passages even if we continue to disagree on the specific referents.
    2. I have a great deal of sympathy for the preterist position, even though that is not precisely what I believe. Symbols generally do find credible referents in the immediate time and place. The problem with the preterist position, in my view, is that it is easy to leave all the book’s other lessons in the past as well. Revelation spoke to its own time, but it also speaks to the future.
    3. Revelation is possibly the most violent book in the New Testament. But it’s not about the violence. It’s about God’s faithfulness.
    4. Revelation is an unfolding of the gospel. It begins with Jesus with his church/people, and it ends with Jesus with his people. The rest assures God’s people that God is paying attention and is with them even when he doesn’t appear to be.
    5. In teaching Revelation we need to emphasize the persecuted church more. When you get to the fifth seal, for example, and the souls under the altar are asking “How long oh Lord?” it helps if we understand what persecution was and is like. I have always discussed persecution as an historical phenomenon. This time I spent more time discussing the present and what some of these passage might mean viewed from the perspective of people suffering persecution right now. Like Hebrews, Revelation speaks to people suffering or soon-to-suffer great hardship. We American Christians, in our ease, are likely to have a hard time hearing the message.
    6. The most important thing a Bible teacher can so, I believe, is teach people how to study for themselves. It’s not about getting across all of my beliefs or particular interpretations. What people need is to find a way to experience God for themselves—to hear God’s voice—through the pages of scripture.

    In addition, I was impressed by how badly I need to revise and improve my study guide. I’m still very happy with the basic approach, but there is so much more that could be said. I’m going to redo the layout, expand my notes and move them to the beginning of each lesson, and spend more time in the study guide talking about the lessons one can learn in this important book about reading scripture and allowing it to change our lives.

  • Yet Again on the (Supposed) Persecution of American Christians

    Jonathan Merritt writes a well-titled article: In the Middle East, not in America, Christians are Actually Persecuted (HT: Dave Black Online via The Jesus Paradigm).

    My tolerance for referring to the comfortable life Christians lead in this country was destroyed before I even knew such a thing was possible. At a very young age I remember fleeing for our lives as some angry folks wanted to kill us. Even that, however, is a very minor incident compared to what Christians in many countries go through every day. We ran less than a mile. Law enforcement was on our side. We returned home the next day. Nonetheless, the memory helps me set the bar a bit higher for the word persecution.

    Now I do believe we should advocate for freedom. I’d be delighted if we would advocate equally for the rights of people of other religions (yes, including Muslims), and people of no religion at all. Besides doing it for the political good of our country, we should do that as Christians on the basis of the golden rule. Let me be very clear here. If Muslims want to build a mosque in my neighborhood, I should be prepared to help them, not protest their presence. If the atheists want a display during Christmas, I’m not going to prevent it. I do this because that is what I would like others to do for me.

    There are many things that can be done about Christians in countries where persecution (even with the bar set higher!) is very real and very constant. You can read just a small number of recent stories in the article I linked. I’m not going to try to argue strategy. Personally I try to provide support to Christian workers where I can. I have little faith in political action. Often, I’m afraid, the actions of American Christians don’t have the effect we hope for. But I could be wrong. Just consider this issue and do something.

    But let’s not call our inconveniences and cultural annoyances “persecution.” It devalues an important word.

  • Christians Behaving Vilely (Rhode Island Edition)

    43 “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. 44 But I say, love your enemies Pray for those who persecute you! 45 In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. (Matthew 5:43-45, NLT)

    It appears that this message has not reached many Christians responding to a court order to remove a Christian banner from a Rhode Island high school. There have been treats against the 17 year old student who was the plaintiff. To get some of the tone of the remarks that aren’t legally “threats,” you might read this article. Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has collected some comments from Twitter (language warning!) in a post titled Crank Up the Christian Hatred.

    What I find even more disturbing is the number of people who are willing to provide some sort of justification for this type of behavior. Again, you’ll find them in the comments with comments such as “What did you expect?” Well, since I have followed church/state cases for years, including one just in the next county, I unfortunately expect Christians to behave very badly, to yell, scream, whine, defy the law, threaten, and resort to vile language in response to being denied some public stage. But in another sense, I expect better.

    And don’t get me wrong based on the text I quoted at the start. These Christians are not experiencing persecution. While they may no longer have a religious banner in their high school, a public place, they doubtless have plenty of churches where they can express their viewpoints, not to mention Twitter and the comments sections of their newspapers, where they can make incredibly unchristian comments while others say, “It’s just natural,” or something of the sort.

    Jesus said to respond in a loving and kind manner when you are persecuted. There’s an Iranian pastor on death row because he will not deny Christ. He’s being persecuted. A young woman was given 40 lashes for converting to Christianity in the Sudan. She is persecuted.

    But pampered Americans who have to pray in their homes, their churches, in restaurants, on the sidewalks, and in many, many non-governmentally sponsored events? Oh the deprivation! Oh the sorrow! Doubtless God will no longer hear us.

    And there are easy targets to blame. Atheists. See how you can make an epithet out of it? So now we talk about how much we hate them because they did what? Because they limited very slightly the places where we can proclaim our message. We don’t get the government’s authority behind our religion? How will the gospel ever survive without the backing of Uncle Sam?

    In a general sense it’s pathetic. The persecuted majority. I’d be laughing if it didn’t make me so furious. But that’s just as an American citizen.

    As a Christian myself, it makes me deeply ashamed and embarrassed. Here we have a perfect opportunity to model the behavior that Jesus commanded. We could be right up front and say, “We don’t want to use the power of the government to pursue our agenda in any case. The gospel doesn’t need a captive audience guaranteed by the power of the police (the public school classroom and facilities). Christians should be defending Jessica Ahlquist. They should be happy that she’s thinking enough about faith to take a courageous stand as she has done.

    And no Christian should excuse the behavior of those who threaten or revile any group of people, in this case atheists and the ACLU (convenient cultural tags for those who don’t go along with our “Christian” culture). We should make it clear that this kind of behavior is not acceptable. Note here that by “revile” I don’t mean “say they’re wrong.” I’m very clearly saying the people who made these comments are wrong. I think they should repent. I don’t think they should be subject to threats of violence, or obscenities, and what’s more I don’t hate them. Their behavior infuriates me. I hope they repent. I call on them to repent.

    I’ve used the word “Christian” for people who behave this way simply because that is what they claim to be. I don’t believe in trying to make non-Christians figure out who the “true” Christians are. God gets to judge that. But there is nothing “Christian” or “Christ-like” about this behavior.

    There are those who call people “Christians in name only” because of doctrinal beliefs. Well, people who behave in the way demonstrated on Twitter and the newspaper comments section are Christians in name only, much more so than anyone who denies some doctrine. There is nothing Christ-like whatsoever about their behavior.

    And those Christians among us who realize this should proclaim it.

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  • Persecution

    I hear complaints from time to time that American Christians are persecuted. Usually this means some minor annoyance, such as being ridiculed for some belief or another. I’ve even heard the complaint when someone is challenged to provide a defense for their faith.

    One of the best ways to get our balance, and to realize how privileged we are in America, despite any minor annoyances, we have but to look at places where Christians are currently actively persecuted, where a threat to their livelihood is the most minor of persecutions, where, in fact, Christians may be killed for their faith.

    World Prayr, an organization with which I’m associated, has been highlighting persecuted Christians on their blog in their daily devotional posts.  (You can find today’s post here.)

    I’d like to add one thing here. In America, we are in the majority as Christians. We may complain about nominal Christians or Christians in name, but churches are ubiquitous, and well accepted. As a majority, we need to resist the temptation to behave as persecutors. As an example, I’m referring to opposition to allowing Muslims to build mosques, and to opposing minority religion representation amongst military chaplains. If these things happened to Christian minorities in other countries, we’d regard it as persecution. We need to do unto others as we would have them do to us.

     

  • What Can We Christians be Thinking?

    There were two posts that really drew my attention while running through my Google Reader account over the last couple of days. The first was from Hannity and Colmes, with hat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars, via WorldNetDaily. I went and found the actual transcript:

    COLMES: What about — what does it say for all those people who do not accept Christ as their personal savior?

    WARREN: I’m saying that this is the perfect time to open their life, to give it a chance. I’d say give him a 60-day trial.

    (CROSSTALK)

    COLMES: Like the Book of the Month Club.

    WARREN: Give him a trial. See if he’ll change your life. I dare you to try trusting Jesus for 60 days. Or your money guaranteed back.

    COLMES: Really? You’re going to give me the money back?

    WARREN: Absolutely. Direct to me, Sean Hannity, FOX News Channel.

    I know lots of presentations of the gospel message, liberal, moderate, conservative, but I don’t know just how that works in with any possible description. I don’t care how you slice it, the gospel works out to a tough, long term commitment. It doesn’t necessarily make you feel better, look better, or acquire you more friends. If those things are happening in your life, be thankful. But becoming a Christian isn’t going to guarantee them.

    I could cite scripture after scripture, but I will simply cite what must be the most important example of Jesus. He certainly “tried God” for much more than 60 days, and his life deteriorated as it went. For him, God wasn’t the path to wealth and fame.

    I can only hope that Rick Warren had his tongue firmly embedded in his cheek when he made those comments, but even if he did, it is a dangerous misrepresentation of what the gospel is all about. Something about “taking up one’s cross,” which doesn’t mean a nice little gold one to hang around your neck. There is value in presenting the gospel in terms that are comprehensible in the culture, to as large an extent as possible, but when you change the message–try it for 60 days is a prominent feature of our instant gratification, materialist culture–that’s another matter.

    If this sort of thing results in ridicule, the ridicule is well-deserved.

    And speaking of ridicule, I dropped by P. Z. Myers’ blog Pharyngula, where he is, unsurprisingly, ridiculing Christians. Myers was the person who asked people to score him some Catholic communion wafers so he could desecrate them.

    Now it would be nice to point out Dr. Myers’ errors, or criticize his methods, or point out something unbalanced about his ridicule. Unfortunately, he is ridiculing this list of Christian bashers, supposedly the top ten bashers of 2008.

    Let’s see what made the list:

    #10 is a musical video. It does ridicule certain Christians, though others would be less annoyed. OK, it’s only #10. Perhaps it was a bad year for Christian bashers.

    #9 is Bill Maher gratuitously (?) attacking the Pope, in this case over the sexual abuse scandal. I’d have to say that, while Bill Maher can be over the top–he’s a comedian after all–there would be much more to complain about if the church had not covered up the scandal for years and moved abusing priests from congregation to congregation. It’s probably a little unfair that he didn’t include protestant clergy, who are not immune from such charges, though they lack a single central organization to scandalously cover up for them. They have to cover up the hard way.

    #8 I won’t repeat, but it’s a case of gratuitous bad taste. I’m doubting that any Christians were actually injured.

    #7 is the desecration of the wafer by the aforementioned P.Z. Myers. While that action was pretty tasteless, stupid, and rude, in my view, I’m pretty sure Jesus was able to handle it quite well and his followers ought to do likewise.

    #6–horror of horrors! Somebody made a movie bashing religion. Whatever will we do?

    #5–chaplains were fired, according to this report, for praying in Jesus’ name. I say “according to this report” because some such stories turn out to be quite different than reported. Chaplains praying in the public square, so to speak, on government time, need to be prepared to be asked to make their prayers generic. Personally I think that the idea of asking someone to pray, i.e. talk to God, and then telling them what to say, obnoxious at best. I think if you invite a Muslim to pray you should expect a Muslim prayer, a Hindu to pray a Hindu prayer, and a Christian to pray a Christian prayer according to his particular tradition. This one, if true, comes the closest to a mild sort of persecution–losing a government job.

    #4–Colorado law criminalizes the Bible. Interesting interpretation, that. How many Christian book store owners or Christian publishers have been arrested, and what did the courts say? Hmm. That’s what I thought.

    #3–Barack Obama defames Christianity. Say what? This is number #??!! The claim here is that Obama really isn’t a Christian, by their standards of course, and thus his claim to be a devout Christian is defamatory. Ah the pain and the agony that someone should claim to be something their not! How will the faith ever survive?

    #2–VP candidate Sarah Palin is attacked. Again, how shall Christianity possibly survive this? A charismatic Christian is made the vice-presidential candidate of a major party, and people, horror of horrors, criticize her. What did she expect? (Also refer to #3. Can Obama claim similar persecution?)

    #1, and we finally get to some actual action. If true, vandalizing property and threatening people’s lives will qualify as persecution. At the same time, I would note that unlike in some places in the world, perpetrators who can be caught will be prosecuted. Does it really qualify as persecution when you can call the police and have the perpetrators arrested? Oh, and what about all those cases where good Christians threaten the lives of those who disagree with them, such as in the Dover trial (see here)?

    What can we Christians be thinking? We expect Christianity to be easy (try it for 60 days). We expect to be prosperous, and for some reason, certainly not derived from experience, tradition, scripture, or even from any reasonable thought process, we think we shouldn’t be attacked, criticized, or ridiculed.

    Are we cry-babies and whiners, willing to dish it out, such as in attacks on gays and lesbians, but not to take it. Obviously acts of violence should be dealt with appropriately by the legal system, but otherwise, this is very simply opposition. People disagree with us. People don’t like us.

    Two things:

    1. Think about places like Orissa and Darfur
    2. Get over it!

    PS: As a bonus, they note that Senator Chuck Grassley investigated their finances! The gall of the man to expect tax exempt organizations to engage in tax exempt activities!

  • Once we faced Lions . . .

    Now we’re afraid our neighbors might think we’re weird. A Christian ministry founder says he believes American Christians are not ready for persecution. I wonder what was his first clue? [HT: Dispatches]

  • Of Necessity and Suffering

    I’ve appreciated much of what John Piper has said about the prosperity gospel. Prosperity theology strikes me as not just false (Biblically and experientially), but particularly dangerous because it either drives one from faith and its actual benefits, or creates a very shallow Christian at best, ready to be driven away at the first difficulty. “Come unto me, all you who want to get rich,” just doesn’t sound much like Jesus to me.

    Via Adrian Warnock’s blog ( PIPER FRIDAY – Suffering is Essential to Christians), I found this set of notes from a talk by John Piper.

    I’m going to use the same quote Adrian did:

    Let me underline one of the statements I’ve already made: Suffering is an essential part of your Christian existence. I choose the word essential very carefully. Paul said to new believers in Acts 14:22, “Through many tribulations we will enter the kingdom of heaven.” This is Christianity 101. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 3:2-3 that we Christians are destined for suffering. This is your destiny—suffering. Think it not strange when the fiery ordeal comes upon you. And 2 Timothy 3:12: All who desire to live a godly life will be persecuted. And Romans 8:16: We are fellow heirs if we suffer with him. There is one God-appointed path to glorification—suffering. If you are making it your life ambition to avoid suffering, you will perish and suffer forever. And all this Pauline talk is based on Jesus’ talk.

    I am not in disagreement with this statement, but I would take a slightly different angle on the issue. Suffering is an essential part of the way that the universe is put together. The difference in suffering for a Christian is one of perspective, and not one either of suffering exclusively. I’m not in disagreement with Piper here. One commenter at Adrian’s blog seemed to think Piper was indicating that only Christians suffer, which would be a foolish thing to say, not to mention demonstrably false.

    There’s also a reverse link that I have heard frequently, the idea that suffering or receiving persecution indicates that one is right. I hear this frequently about great leaders of the past. If they hadn’t been right, why would they have been so persecuted? This sentiment reflects an awe-inspiring ignorance of history, in which people on all sides of various controversies have suffered persecutions. The trinitarians, who won, were persecuted until they did win. The Arians, however, also suffered for Christ. Gnostics suffered as well. In the reformation, Catholics and all varieties of protestants were persecuted at various times for their beliefs. Persecution is an indication of persistence on the one hand, and a severely overdone desire for control on the other, but it doesn’t tell you whether someone is right.

    Back in March, I wrote about Bill Dembski’s article on theodicy, in which he argues that though evil occurred later in humanity, that evil (the fall) was nonetheless the logical cause of death and suffering. (Note that the article was revised on March 15, 2007, and the date of that post was March 4, 2007. I have not reviewed the article since that revision.) Though I have often written negatively about Dr. Dembski’s work, I find this particular article intriguing and challenging.

    I would suggest, however, that in order for their to be free will there must be options with consequences. Those consequences must offer the full range of results of the choices. Further, if there is both free will and interaction with other creatures, not all consequences of any one creature’s choices will fall on that creature alone. To take a simple example, if I fail to pay my power bill, I’m not the only one who has to sit in the dark. My wife shares that problem with me. If one person takes an incomplete course of an antibiotic, and as a result helps release a resistant strain, the consequences fall on many, not just one.

    One can easily imagine a universe in which there is no suffering, or no negative consequences, but such a universe would simply be a machine. I think it’s difficult if not impossible to demonstrate that the universe is not a machine, though most of us persist in the belief that somehow it is not and that our choices matter.

    Which leads me to a brief excursus on free will. I have heard many folks say there is no free will only to discover that what they mean is that our will is not completely free, i.e. that there are options closed to me. What I am speaking about here is any departure from the purest determinism. If the universe is not perfectly deterministic, and more specifically if my actions are not 100% determined by knowable causes, then I would call that free will. I would imagine a continuum, from pure determinism through absolute freedom. On the one hand, there would be no responsibility, because there would be no I with an input into my decisions. On the other hand, there would be no order against which to observe freedom in action. I’m calling anywhere on the intervening continuum free will. My feeling is that the reality is much, much closer to determinism than to complete freedom.

    I would note with some humor that every time I discuss this I seem to get someone who will tell me that quantum theory demonstrates determinism, and someone else to tell me that it demonstrates that there is some indeterminacy. I don’t know enough about it to argue with either one, though I lean to some level of indeterminacy.

    In any case, let me get back to my point. Suffering exists in the world, and it is a necessity because there is freedom. While I do not understand the physics, I can affirm that the Biblical writers believed in some degree of human freedom and responsibility. The Bible also affirms that God’s servants, even God’s very good servants, suffer. Job is called righteous, and he suffered. Jesus, according to Christian theology, made all the right choices in his life, and he suffered. The question is not whether some form of hardship will come, but rather what will come of the hardship.

    And let me make a little point here. Suffering is hard to measure, and it is probably better not to even try. When our son was suffering from cancer, one of our friends complained to my wife about a problem she had, and then was embarrassed. “How could I complain to you about my tiny problem when you are facing such a big one?” she asked. Well, just what a particular problem does to you isn’t that easily measurable. Even the moment in a situation that is hardest to take differs. I recall my lowest point being when I spoke to the doctor and heard the word that cancer had spread and was not treatable. My wife was overseas leading a mission trip, and I knew it would take hours at best to contact her. I’ve never felt anything like that pain and isolation, even when he died. (It’s coming up on the anniversary of that, September 22, so it’s kind of running through my mind again.)

    My wife Jody has just written a book about grief (which also is making me remember), based on what she learned in 12 years as a hospice nurse and our own experience. In it she said:

    I believe that each loss is personal and the degree of grief or pain is personal and cannot be compared!

    (OK, here’s the shameless advertising plug. The book is Grief: Finding the Candle of Light and should be shipping September 21. She has also written about this on her blog here.)

    The question is not one of quantity or whether or not you will suffer. Suffering is an essential. The question is what you are going to do with it. One of the things both my wife and I have been able to do is to listen with sympathy to people who are undergoing loss, and occasionally even to talk to them. Many people were encouraged by the way that James faced death. That is a good thing that happened. I know a number of people who started to wear “Live Strong” bracelets because of what they saw in James’ life and the way he faced death. More importantly, they determined to “live strong” themselves.

    Those are good things. Now comes the odd question. Did God kill James in order to accomplish those good things? I’ve found that there are some Christians who seem to need to think of it like that in order to deal with what happened. Somehow it’s easier for them to handle if God is doing everything. For others, the thought that God did it is so repugnant that they will deny it with all their force, or alternatively abandon faith because they can’t deny it, and feel certain that God did it.

    There is a sense in which God does everything. He is that First Cause (logically, not temporally) that brought everything into being. If it were not for God there would be no cells, no DNA to have copying errors, and thus no cancer. At the same time, all of those things are results of that basic law of cause and effect without which freedom would have no meaning. Thus as I see it God didn’t give James cancer; James got cancer in God’s world.

    I have been asked how I kept my faith through this struggle. I would say two things about that.

    First, I never thought that my faith would make me exempt from the troubles that are in the world. In other words, my theological thinking about suffering was refined, but not essentially changed by this experience. This is a major reason I oppose prosperity theology. One’s faith is most needed when things are not going so well. Discipline is needed when they are going well.

    Second, however, it was my faith that helped me work my way through it. To ask me why I didn’t abandon my faith in the midst of this difficulty is to ask a man in danger of drowning in heavy seas why he doesn’t let go of the life preserver. He’s in heavy seas, after all! But anyone in that situation would say, “That’s precisely why I’m clinging to this life preserver.”

    Faith will be tested. How and when will vary. You may find it impossible to compare your suffering to someone else’s. The question is whether you will grow from it, or get destroyed by it.

    PS: For more information, see my three essays titled The Hand of God, part 1, part 2, and part 3. These three essays are edited and incorporated in my book Not Ashamed of the Gospel: Confessions of a Liberal Charismatic.